“Industry trends around the time when development begins is a pretty big factor. I started development on Smash for 3DS/ Wii U right after I’d wrapped up Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Fire Emblem Awakening was released one month after Uprising. So what’s popular around the time when I begin designing the game is important.” – Masahiro Sakurai (Translation by Soma).

With this new information in mind I got curious. Is this something new for Super Smash Bros for Wii U & 3DS or has this been Sakurai’s philosophy throughout the Super Smash Bros series? Could the trends of the time really help to influence the roster this much? Does this mean that with the seemingly eventual ‘Smash NX’ we should not start predicting characters until it is actually announced?

Melee: June 1st – July 7th 1999

26 characters. That is over double of the previous game. Truly an amazing upgrade.

After the release of the original Super Smash Bros in early 1999, Sakurai was tasked with creating a sequel almost instantly. That same year, Sakurai began Melee’s development, and not a lot of time had passed since he decided on the original roster. Sakurai felt that what he had accomplished with Smash 64 was only 60% of what he had in mind for his final vision of the game. With Melee he could finally make the complete Smash experience that he wanted. Not many series had changed drastically in relevancy since 1997, so there were various other reasons why certain characters made it in. However, all the characters chosen sans one were relevant at that time.

For starters, let us look at the characters that Sakurai had originally planned for the first Super Smash Bros game but did not make the cut due to time.

The Almost Smash 64 Characters:

“It is about time I made it into Smash. I was tired of waiting.”

Bowser: When deciding which characters should be added to Super Smash Bros. Melee, Bowser was one of the frontrunners for various reasons. Not only is he Nintendo’s main villain character, but he was also popular as Sakurai has stated that he was the runaway winner in the Smash 2 poll.

So Bowser’s inclusion makes a whole lot of sense even without looking at recent games. Much like Mario, Bowser is always relevant as he is always appearing in games. Mario Golf, the Mario Party series and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe were all recently released at the time and Bowser appeared in all of them. He was also planned to appear in both Paper Mario and Mario Tennis which were in development at the time so, so he would continue to be relevant.

Look at all that Japanese. If only we had some translators on this site…

Marth: Thanks to a very recent interview with Sakurai in the Fire Emblem 25th Anniversary book, we now know that Marth was considered for Smash 64. One of the reasons Sakurai wanted Marth in the game was to have some variation in the sword-wielding characters. However, there was another reason that is more relevant to our discussion. Sakurai said that he wanted Fire Emblem represented in Super Smash Bros because Fire Emblem was a popular series that boasted multiple popular titles. This being a criteria for including Fire Emblem makes it likely that this same criteria was used when looking at other new franchises as well (excluding retro franchises which operate under a different set of criteria).

The status of Fire Emblem’spopularity had not changed in the previous two years since making the first Smash Bros. title. It’s only natural that Marth became one of Sakurai’s first choices for inclusion in Melee . Marth was an original hero and the only character from Fire Emblem to span multiple games: the first title on the Famicom, the Super Famicom remake and the Satellaview Gaiden Chapters (which at the time, was also the newest Fire Emblem game released). Two Fire Emblem titles were in development during the project plan of Melee, neither of which contained Marth. These were Fire Emblem 64 (that went on to become the Binding Blade), and Thracia 766.

Man this guy was the coolest Pokemon in the late 90s and arguably still is today.

Mewtwo was a major Pokemon character, thanks to Pokemon: The First Movie. The movie was released on July 18th, 1998 in Japan, slightly over a year after the project plan for Melee was finished. In that time Mewtwo had arguably become one of the most popular and important Pokemon characters. This, along with the increase in Pokemon titles due to the various spin-offs, both released and planned by the time of Melee’s development (like the Pokemon TCG game, Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Pinball game) made a new Pokemon representative an obvious choice. Its relevancy and popularity was only increasing.

Next are the other characters that were planned from the very beginning. A lot of these characters have something unique about them that pushed them to the fore-front of development. Additionally, many of them were relevant during the time period of Melee’s development as well.

The Remaining All-Stars

The simultaneous co-op was pretty unique for a Nintendo game at this time.

Ice Climbers: When picking new characters Sakurai had decided on including a character that would represent the Famicom-era. A purposeful throwback character. Sakurai made a list of characters that were from this era and then went through them with a set of criteria. Could they easily be made into a fighter? Did they have something that made them unique? Was there game popular?

A lot of characters were chosen from big names like Balloon Fighter and Excitebiker to more obscure characters like Bubbles and Ayumi Tachibana. In the end, the Ice Climbers triumphed. The simultaneous multiplayer found in their game inspired Sakurai to make them a duo character where players could control two characters simultaneously.

There was no new Ice Climber’s game at this time or any re-releases, meaning they were chosen specifically for reasons outside of trends. The theme of including a ‘retro character’ would become a common occurrence in every Smash game from Melee.

Super Mario Bros 2 (USA) was the black sheep of the series and one many want a sequel to.

Peach: Just like Bowser, Peach will always be relevant as she is Nintendo’s leading lady. She appeared in many of the same games Bowser and Mario were in, like Mario Party and Mario Golf, and was sure to be relevant in the future as well. Just like Bowser, Peach did well on the Smash 2 poll, placing second overall with 66 votes. She was also a female character which is something Sakurai wanted to include more of after receiving some backlash on the lack of female characters in the original Super Smash Bros.

Sakurai decided to base her moves off of Super Mario Bros 2 (USA) as it was the only action-game where you could play as Peach. On the Melee website, Sakurai also references Super Mario Advance, where Peach was playable as well.

And wisdom went to Zelda right? Man, I wonder where she is right now?

Zelda & Sheik: Ocarina of Time came out the year before Smash 64 and was considered the best Zelda game at that point from both a critical and commercial standpoint. This meant a new Zelda character made a lot of sense. In the end, we actually ended up with four. Two of them were Zelda and Sheik, who were very unique characters as they can transform into each other. Zelda could become Sheik using her down-special and vice-versa. Neither of these two were the most popular Zelda character in the Smash 2 poll, so it was likely the idea of a transforming character that appealed to Sakurai.

It would have also helped that Zelda was incredibly important to the series as a whole. Sheik does not have this same importance and probably only made it onto the roster because of her connection to Zelda. She stands out a lot from the other Zelda characters in Smash, both here and in future games. Thanks to Ocarina of Time, Sheik was very relevant at the time of Melee’s project plan. Sheik was also popular, receiving the same amount of votes in the Smash 2 poll as Zelda and as Young Link.

So does this make Mario a Game & Watch character or Mr. Game & Watch a Mario character?

Mr. Game & Watch: On the Melee website, Sakurai described Mr. Game and Watch as a ‘rule-breaking choice’. What Sakurai is likely referring to is the fact is not really a character but an amalgamation of various characters from various games. In my opinion, it could also refer to how old the Game and Watch was and so how out of the current gaming trends it was. Sakurai himself even says that it is hard to buy Game & Watch’s anymore.

It was the uniqueness of his character, his moveset, and his importance to Nintendo’s history that led Sakurai to choose him. However, although Game & Watch’s themselves were harder to purchase at this time, the Game and Watch Gallery series were keeping the games relevant, something Sakurai admits himself. The the third Game and Watch Gallery game was about to launch when Sakurai was choosing characters for the roster, so the Game and Watch series was on people’s minds at this point in time.

That is all for the Melee newcomers that were decided in the original project plan, but as we know, these were not the only characters who made it into the game. A handful of characters were chosen mid-development thanks to their models being similar to that of already existing characters. By Sakurai’s own admission, they were chosen for various different reasons: some because of fan requests and popularity, some because of Sakurai’s own wants, and some because of their relevance at this time. We have no concrete time period for when the clones were decided on.

In terms of relevancy and trends Dr. Mario was arguably not in the public eye at this time. Dr. Mario did make an appearance in 1998 for Nintendo’s Satellaview service in Japan but that was it. He later appeared in a Japan exclusive, Nintendo Puzzle Collection, but more than likely trends of the time had little to no impact on Dr. Mario’s inclusion in Melee.

Welcome to Smash, Falco Lombardi.

Falco: Star Fox 64 was a popular and successful game. Perhaps due to this success, Sakurai decided to add a second Star Fox character and Falco was chosen because he was the highest scoring character from Star Fox in the Smash 2 poll.By May 2001, Rare’s Dinosaur Planet had begun its overhaul into Star Fox Adventures and was now planned to be a GameCube title. Whether this happened before or after Sakurai’s decision to implement Falco into Melee, we just do not know.

It is this exact model that is used in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Without it, Ganondorf may not have made it into Smash at this time.

Ganondorf: Ganondorf’s inclusion in Melee is certainly a product of a lucky situation. Ganondorf was the most popular character from Zelda in the Smash 2 poll. He was relevant because of Ocarina of Time. However, Sakurai might have felt that Zelda and Sheik were just more unique because Ganondorf was not included in the original project plan.

Sakurai has stated that Ganondorf’s inclusion is entirely down to the fact that he has a slightly similar build to Captain Falcon. Ganondorf also happened to appear in the Space World 2000 Zelda tech demo for the GameCube where he fought against Link in a CGI fight scene. This meant that there was also a GameCube model for Ganondorf that Sakurai could easily use to make him. All of this is what leads to Ganondorf’s inclusion although that is not to say he was not relevant. While Ganondorf did not appear in Majora’s Mask;he was planned to appear in the Oracle games that were in development at this time. However, it’s unknown if this influenced his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Majora’s Mask was actually the 4th game to star a young Link over an older Link.

Young Link: In Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Zelda series received four newcomers which was more than any other franchise. Two of these newcomers were clones with Ganondorf and Young Link. Unlike Ganondorf who has evidence to be the final character finished, Young Link was finished a lot earlier.On the Melee website, Sakurai reports that Zelda’s creator stated that Adult Link’s story is a side quest to the timeline and Young Link’s is the true path. Adding to this is that Young Link has appeared in more games than Adult Link. Furthermore, Young Link was the star of the upcoming Zelda title, Majora’s Mask. Adding Young Link also allowed Sakurai to address the common complaint against Link found in Super Smash Bros. 64 that he was too slow.

The anime was a major influence for Pokemon in this game, more than any of the other Smash games.

Pichu: When making clones, Sakurai enjoyed the idea of the joke character. In the original Super Smash Bros.this was Jigglypuff but for this game, Sakurai decided to change this. He chose to buff Jigglypuff up because he had an idea for a new joke character: Pichu. Pichu was added in as a weak Pikachu who had no benefits. Even Jigglypuff could be devastating in the right hands, so Pichu was designed to be all around bad.

A big reason why Pichu could have been chosen, goes back to the anime. For the third Pokemon movie that came out in summer of 2000, there was a short called Pikachu and Pichu that helped to push Pichu into the public eye, just like it did with Mewtwo. It was not just the anime though, a brand new, main, Pokemon game with PokemonGold & Silver launched in Japan late 1999. It is very possible that Sakurai wanted to represent the newer Pokemon games, much like he does with later Smash games, so Pichu could have been chosen for that reason.

Early concept art of Roy. For more information on Roy’s early design check out Kantopia’s blog. It was a really useful source for this article.

During this time, Roy’s game had gone through big development shifts, originally planned for the Nintendo 64 but then moved over to the GBA after the failure of that system. Sakurai saw Roy in the beta stages of his design and so his personality and appearance in Smash was heavily based on Sakurai’s interpretation of the character. This is why he differs a bit from his final version.

Roy shows perfectly how Sakurai might pick a character based on their relevancy and was one of my original influences for beginning this series of analysis. Roy was chosen because he was incredibly relevant to the current trends. His game was meant to come out before Melee and so in Japan, he would be in the public mind.

Many of the newcomers in Melee were either important characters to their series, had a unique moveset or idea behind them, or some kind of combination of the two. The clones did not follow this criteria exactly but they were included for other reasons. While relevancy is still not the most important factor in deciding the roster we do see that it is becoming more and more important. It was not the deciding factor as character importance and popularity played a bigger role for some other characters (like Bowser). However, almost every character was very relevant in the public mind at that time and this played a factor into some of the characters inclusions.

The development time between the original Super Smash Bros and Super Smash Bros. Melee was very short but this is all different for the third game in the series, which came out an entire console generation after Melee. The status of many series had changed in that time and many new ones were introduced. Sakurai himself had also changed (with him leaving HAL and becoming a freelancer). This affected how he chose characters for the next game.

If you have any questions or comments then let us know below or hit me up on twitter @MrNantendo. I would love to help out and hear your views on the Smash series roster. With that, I hope you look forward to the third part of these series of articles where I will tackle the Wii’s entry into the franchise: Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

If video game historian was a career that would be my goal in life. I have spent a lot of my life studying various histories and so I am super familiar with sourcing, which is pretty essential for this site and just a good thing to do in general so you do not spread lies. I have a huge fascination with the old days and ips with Nintendo. There is so much potential for old franchises like Balloon Fight, Marvelous, Nazo no Murusame Jo and more to come back in the modern age. At least Smash celebrates those games! My focus for source gaming are the Dream articles and working on Project Omega. I hope you enjoy reading my work.

8 comments

I considered that option but Dr. Mario 64 is weird. It came out in 2001 but only in America (and in china for the iQue in 2003). I believe it was a part of the japan only nintendo puzzle collection but that was for gamecube. So I don’t think Sakurai was aware, or that it was even in development in 1999.

Good research article! At least most of those characters are responses towards the Smash 2 poll, while the Pokemon are mostly reflected to their popularity in the anime movie series.

I still remember some western audiences were complaining about Marth and Roy too often. Not that they’re controlling were bad, but mostly are “WHO THE HELL ARE THEY!?” things. I didn’t even know who they were since FE series weren’t released in the west back then, but I guess some players understand thanks to those gaming magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Gamepro (wow such nostalgic titles. lol) And I guess their inclusion made players curious about the series, which was the beginning of FE’s oversea releases.

But I guess this was still a starting point of how Sakurai chooses characters that’s more unique. If Sakurai say the 64 version is 60% perfect, then I could say Melee was 75% due to those clones being as secret characters, not being so unique and rather using similar moves but different power level. But I can’t blame Sakurai for that, there were still limitations on machine power and data memories, plus not every companies wanted to allow Sakurai use their characters for certain reasons back at that time. But things have been changed since then, and since Sakurai left HAL where they’re strict with some rules to protect and limits to be avoided, he can now overcome those limits, and think and imagine whatever he can put for the next Smash, which will be Brawl.

Good work on the article! Will be looking forward for the Brawl version!

He seemed to like making a joke character that disappointed it’s fans and overall was a quick giggle, and really seemed determined to include Young Link for various reasons he thought the character excelled in, adding in a popular character last second with Ganon.

And now fast forward to 4. A lot changed from his perspective, except one thing…

Nice article. Can’t wait for the one on Brawl’s characters to come out. I can already picture a few descriptions for certain characters already

Snake

Caption: Being the first ever third party character in the history of the Super Smash Bros franchise, Snake caused quite the commotion in the gaming community when he appeared at the very end of Brawl’s 2006 E3 trailer.

It’s common knowledge that Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear, the series from which Snake hails from really wanted the soldier of fortune in Melee. However, due to the game being too far in development for that to happen, Sakurai declined Kojima’s request. In terms of relevancy, Snake had the critically acclaimed Metal Gear Solid released in 1998 on the original Sony PlayStation which was eventually remade for the Nintendo GameCube as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes in 2004. In addition to that, Snake also had Metal Gear Solid 2 Son of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater under his belt ensuring that he would still be very relevant in the gaming world.

Pit

Caption: The little angel that could.

Continuing the trend of “quirky retro character” started by the Ice Climbers in Melee, Pit’s inclusion makes a lot of sense. Like the Ice Climbers, Pit’s own game quickly fell under the radar after its release being overshadowed by far more popular games at the time no doubt due to the first level being notoriously difficult for most gamers. For those who stuck with it however, most found Kid Icarus to be a fairly solid if not memorable Metroid clone. In an interview, Sakurai stated that he based Pit’s design as if he had been around for years much like Link from Zelda going from a little boy to a young man. Thanks to his inclusion in Brawl and becoming a fan favorite amongst players, Pit would eventually take flight again in 2012 with the release of Kid Icarus: Uprising on the 3DS.

King Dedede

Caption: The third time’s the charm

King Dedede is a unique case amongst the Brawl newcomers having been the only character to have been considered not once, but twice for a previous Super Smash Bros game having been scrapped in 64 alongside Bowser and denied yet again in Melee as Sakurai didn’t want to over represent his own series. Seeing as how Bowser and later Ganondorf had gotten into Melee as the franchise’s first villain characters, it was high time that King Dedede got in on the fun. Being a significant character alongside Meta Knight in the Kirby franchise, Triple D didn’t have to worry about not being relevant when Sakurai started making a list of all the newcomers he wanted for Brawl.